Noob question about AI and diplomacy

[sum1lost]

Lazy_Perfectionist said:
If I've got conveniently placed independent scout recruiting points, I churn out scouts nearly nonstop until I've saturated nearby nations. I even find it helpful to place scouts in the lands of trustworthy allies. If they're facing a deep, hostile invasion, it will let me know precisely what I'll be facing if I launch a relief effort, or aim assisting assassinations.
Or, if the invading force moves on without leaving any province defense or troops behind (it happens), I get to mess with their lines of retreat.

This is how I did a good deal of damage to Man, including destroying his retreating knights and prophet-hero-commander.

[Ygorl]

At least in Dom2, the AI would tend to pick whom and when to attack by comparing the number of troops to the number of provinces for each nation. If a nation had lots of provinces but few troops (regardless of their power) it would be a ripe target for the AI. You could fool it by hiring lots of PD (those were counted) or lots of garbage troops, thereby convincing it that you weren't worth the trouble of attacking.

[NTJedi]

sector24 said:
The only thing I can tell you about the AI is that they know when you're weak. I'm curious how many scouts they employ.

My view about the AI in Dominions_3:
I seriously doubt the AI knows how to use scouts, and thus shouldn't be buying them. I could write a whole list of improvements needed by the AI, but it's too much for a small company like Illwinter.
For this reason I've been requesting the next version of Dominions provide modding of the AI via scripts. Ideally the next version of Dominions would provide us the following options:
1) Aggressive (currently within Dominions_3)
2) Standard (currently within Dominions_3)
3) Defensive (currently within Dominions_3)
4) Random (currently within Dominions_3)
5) Custom_A (hopefully found in Dominions_4)
6) Custom_B (hopefully found in Dominions_4)
7) Custom_C (hopefully found in Dominions_4)
8) Custom_D (hopefully found in Dominions_4)
9) Custom_E (hopefully found in Dominions_4)

** Custom A thru E are scripts which can be edited by gamers to improve the AI. Thus anytime someone complains about the AI... all the community has to say is "make a better AI via the scripts". As time passes custom AI scripts will continue to improve, the more scripting commands available the greater the opportunity for a powerful AI.

[Aethyr]

NT--

Your comments regarding editing the map file to allow AI sides to team up has given me some ideas. I did not know this could be done, and it would be great for some tests that I have in mind.

Prescisely how I would go about editing the file is not quite intuitive for me, could you elaborate a bit? Thanks for your help.

[llamabeast]

If you mean how to actually edit it - open it in notepad, it's just a text file.

There is guide on map editing in the dominions3/doc folder.

[Aethyr]

Ahhh...

Thanks LB.

[Gandalf Parker]

The allies command allows you to set two AIs to not attack each other. Here is a short-list of map commands.
http://www.dom3minions.com/docs/map_qref.txt

With #allies you can create a map as a scenario such as

A) F.E.A.R
the Family of Ermor, Atlantis, Rlyeh. 3 pretender gods, all siblings. They have agreed to share the world. Start them with extra castles and armies and equipment.

B) Save Arcos
Set Ermor as "ally" to Arcos just so it wont attack. But place Arcos inside its castle and Ermor outside of the castle, seiging it. Your mission is to get there and free arcos before they fall.

C) Turtles
Give all of the AIs 5 or 6 starting provinces and set them all ally to each other. Including possible setting them ally to nation 23 (the independents). That way NONE of them will attack. They will only sit and buildup wating for you to come and get them. Might create some fun giant battles.

[Ewierl]

By the way, AFAIK, the AI actually targets weak players instead of strong ones, mostly via the Army Size graph. This is an effective plan sometimes, but sadly they do it all the time... and doubly sad when combined with all the AIs massing independents the way they're wont to do, human-run army sizes invariably end up on the lower end of the scale. Nowadays I always use the No Independents mod in SP.

[Gandalf Parker]

Changing the game settings can help also. Raising indept strength while turning down the resources in the game can get almost the same results as the no-indepts mod.

But I do really want to urge anyone to do a scenario map. The BEST fix for the AI would be a better created AI. With a scenario map you can keep the AI from getting just a randomly-built god. Make the map with a chosen god and chosen scales that make sense for that nation.

Of course, the drawback of such a map is that the more that is removed from being randomly selected by the game, the less re-playability that map has. But if a BUNCH of us did some then we would have more to choose from.

Come on people, if you are an expert Ermorian, then make us an Ermorian scenario to play against. Please?

[thejeff]

Part of the problem of course is that an good human pretender is often not a good AI pretender. A god designed for any particular strategy (Summons or forging to expand magic/SC/Casting game winning spells) won't work, since the AI won't work towards that strategy. It won't even take advantage of a strong bless (Won't recruit enough sacreds, won't bless them if it does.)

Probably the best AI pretenders are fairly generic high dominion/scales gods. Preferably immobile or immortal so they can't be killed easily.